children, whose education was their chief
care,--their idea of education including the training of the heart and
the manners as well as the mind.

When eight years old Thomas was sent to the grammar school at Glasgow,
where he began the study of Latin and Greek. "I was so early devoted
to poetry," he writes, "that at ten years old, when our master, David
Allison, interpreted to us the first Eclogue of Virgil, I was
literally thrilled with its beauty. In my thirteenth year I went to
the University of Glasgow, and put on the red gown. The joy of the
occasion made me unable to eat my breakfast. Whether it was
presentiment or the mere castle-building of my vanity, I had even then
a day-dream that I should one day be Lord Rector of the university."

As a boy, Campbell gained a considerable familiarity with the Latin
and Greek poets usually read in college, and was always more inclined
to pride himself on his knowledge of Greek poetry than on his own
reputation in the art. His college life was passed in times of great
political excitement. Revolution was in the air, and all youthful
spirits were aflame with enthusiasm for the cause of liberty and with
generous sympathy for oppressed people, particularly the Poles and the
Greeks. Campbell was caught by the sacred fire which later was to
touch the lips of Byron and Shelley; and in his earliest published
poem his interest in Poland, which never died out from his heart,
found its first expression. This poem, 'The Pleasures of Hope,' a work
whose title was thenceforth to be inseparably associated with its
author's name, was published in 1799, when Campbell was exactly
twenty-one years and nine months old. It at once placed him high in
public favor, though it met with the usual difficulty experienced by a
first poem by an unknown writer, in finding a publisher. The copyright
was finally bought by Mundell for sixty pounds, to be paid partly in
money and partly in books. Three years after the publication, a London
publisher valued it as worth an annuity of two hundred pounds for
life; and Mundell, disregarding his legal rights, behaved with so much
liberality that from the sale of the first seven editions Campbell
received no less than nine hundred pounds. Besides this material
testimony to its success, scores of anecdotes show the favor with
which it was received by the poets and writers of the time. The
greatest and noblest of them all, Walter Scott, was most generous in
his wel